Azure Weekly Updates - August 8th, 2022

Azure Public IPv6 offerings are free as of July 31

Effective July 31 2022, all Public IPv6 Addresses and Public IPv6 Prefixes will be free. The Public IP billing meters will also reflect this change with updated naming: Basic IPv4 Public IP, Basic IPv4 Static Public IP, and Standard IPv4 Static Public IP.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

US West 3 price adjustment

As part of our commitment to delivering the best possible value for Azure customers, we are announcing a price reduction in the US West 3 region, effective August 1st, 2022.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

AMD-based confidential VMs for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides the capability for organizations to deploy containers at scale. We are expanding the Azure confidential computing portfolio to enable AMD-based confidential VM node pools in AKS, adding defense-in-depth to Azure's already hardened security profile.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Next hop IP support for Route Server

With next hop IP support, you can deploy network virtual appliances (NVAs) behind an Azure Internal Load Balancer (ILB) to acheive key active-passive connectivity scenarios and improve connectivity performance.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Application Insights in China North 3 and China East 3

Azure Monitor Application Insights is now generally available for customers in China North 3 and China East 3 regions.

Application Insights is part of Azure Monitor. It collects telemetry from a variety of sources and uses the query language from Azure Data Explorer to retrieve and analyse data.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Enforcement mode of machine configuration (previously guest configuration)

The enforcement mode of machine configuration (previously guest configuration) is now generally available. This represents the ApplyAndMonitor and ApplyAndAutocorrect auditing modes. The customer experience within Azure has not changed as a result of the renaming. Machine configuration continues to provide a native capability to audit or configure operating system settings as code, both for machines running in Azure and hybrid Azure Arc-enabled servers, directly per-machine or at-scale orchestrated through Azure Automanage, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, or Azure Policy.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Reservation administrator and reader roles in the Azure Portal

Read and manage all reservations using the reservation administrator and reader roles in your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant (directory) without having to explicitly be assigned to individual reservations. You can now assign these roles in the Azure Portal.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Log Analytics in China North 3 and China East 3

Azure Log Analytics is part of Azure Monitor. It collects telemetry from a variety of sources and uses the query language from Azure Data Explorer to retrieve and analyze data.

Azure Log Analytics is generally available in China North 3 and China East 3 regions. See the full list of available regions on the product webpage.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Firewall Premium is now ICSA labs certified

The new Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) certification from ICSA Labs is an important IPS certification, is an addition to our existing Firewall certification, from ICSA Labs.

Azure Firewall Premium SKU is a managed, cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. It provides advanced threat protection that meets the needs of highly sensitive and regulated environments and includes Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and TLS inspection capabilities.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Monitor metric alerts dynamic thresholds outage detection

Azure Monitor metric alerts with dynamic thresholds detection, leverages advanced machine learning (ML) to learn metrics' historical behavior and identify patterns and anomalies that indicate possible service issues.

Automatic outage detection improves thresholds training after service issues are detected.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Dedicated Host support for Ultra SSD

Currently, VMs running on Azure Dedicated Host support the use of Standard and Premium Azure disks as data disks. With this preview, we are introducing support for Azure Ultra Disks on Azure Dedicated Host.

Azure Ultra disks are highly performant disks on Azure that offer high throughput (maximum of 4000 MBps per disk) and high IOPS (maximum of 160,00 IOPS per disk) depending on the disk size.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Enable VM insights using Azure Monitor agent

Currently, Azure Monitor VM insights requires a Log Analytics agent and a dependency agent installed on each virtual machine or virtual machine scale set to be monitored. This public preview will introduce a version of VM insights that makes use of the new Azure Monitor agent and would replace the existing Log Analytics agent.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Container insights portal integration with basic logs

Basic logs offer a low-cost alternative to the standard analytics logs. Azure Monitor container insights offers support for basic logging through the ContainerLogV2 schema (preview).

With the container insights integration, you can now receive the full portal feature parity with drill-in functionality through the container insights portal experience.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

.NET 7 support in Linux Consumption Plan

You can provide feedback about this preview feature and your use cases via the Azure Functions .NET language worker Github repository.

See the announcement for .NET 7 support for Azure functions in an isolated process.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure App Service Environment v3 support for custom domain suffix

Custom domain suffix capability is now available in App Service Environment (ASE), an Azure App Service feature that provides a fully isolated and dedicated environment for running App Service apps securely at high scale. Your apps are not restricted by the DNS settings for your App Service Environment’s default domain suffix to only be accessible by those domain names. Custom domain suffix is an internal load balancer (ILB) App Service Environment feature that allows you to use your own domain suffix to access the apps in your App Service Environment.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

FIPS compliant nodes for Windows in AKS

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 is a US government standard that defines minimum security requirements for cryptographic modules in information technology products and systems.

AKS allows you to create Linux and Windows-based node pools with FIPS 140-2 enabled. Deployments running on FIPS-enabled node pools can use those cryptographic modules to provide increased security and help meet security controls as part of FedRAMP compliance.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

AKS node pool user start/stop feature

The AKS node pool start/stop feature allows you to completely stop specific user node pools and pick up later where you left off with a switch of a button, saving time and costs.

Previously, you had to either scale a user node pool and all its workloads down to zero in order to save costs or keep it running with a low footprint to avoid re-deployment, adding to operations time, or wasting compute resources. The start/stop feature keeps user node pool configurations in place, like the previous node count, allowing you to pick up where you left off without reconfiguring the node pools.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Policy blocking the deployment of vulnerable images

You can now protect your Kubernetes clusters and container workloads from potential threats by restricting deployment of container images with vulnerabilities in their software components.

This feature allows you to use Azure Policy and Azure Defender for Containers to identify and patch vulnerabilities prior to deployment.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Load Testing in West US 2

Azure Load Testing is in public preview in West US 2.

See full list of available regions on the product by region page.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

RedisJSON available in Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise

The Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tiers of Azure Cache for Redis now support the popular RedisJSON module. This module adds native functionality to store, query, and search JSON formatted data, which allows you to store data more easily in a document-style format in Redis. This simplifies common Redis use cases like storing product catalog or user profile data.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Audit log for continuous mode with Azure Cosmos DB

Audit log for continuous mode with Azure Cosmos DB allows you to view your details of restore action on source account and destination account. It allows you to see the restore progress in activity log in terms of which database and containers were restored for the given account. It also helps to validate who performed this activity and the time of this action. This audit information is available within the activity log so there is no need to switch on a special diagnostic log.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Migration tool feature with Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server

Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server provides maximum flexibility over your database, built-in cost-optimization controls, and support for latest PostgreSQL major versions compared to Single Server. You typically must perform manual migrations using PostgreSQL dump and restore or using Azure Database Migration Service. The new migration tool (available in select regions) includes a seamless, inline experience to migrate your Single Server to Flexible Server and has automated a number of steps required for migration. It supports online and offline modes of migrations, and suitable for databases less than 1TB size.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.